WhisperPhone®

The WhisperPhone is a hands-free, acoustical voice-feedback headset that enables learners to focus and hear themselves ten times more clearly as they learn by processing language aloud. Provide your students with this valuable reinforcement. This unit is fund certified for Title 1 and Reading First, dishwasher safe, reversible for either ear and battery free. Recommended for children five years of age or older.

How WhisperPhone® helps:

Reading and Spelling

When students are learning to read, they must read aloud. One of the reasons this is true is because children must first be made aware of the individual sounds, or phonemes, in a word. Once they are aware of these phonemes, they begin to recognize that when these sounds are put together, they equal a word. By raising the learner’s phonemic awareness, WhisperPhone® accelerates the learning process.

Editing and Writing

When children are learning to write, it is common for them to misspell words or even omit words. When wearing WhisperPhone® during a writing or editing activity, learners can, without disturbing others, say every word aloud to hear each sound in the word very clearly. Speaking each word aloud as they write it tends to have a positive effect in three areas. First, it slows the pace at which they write so they take the time to really focus on their work. Second, learners tend to omit fewer words in their initial copy writing. Third, because they sound out each word as they write it, spelling results tend to improve. These same benefits will likely be seen in editing phase of writing as well.

Childhood Apraxia of Speech

Why WhisperPhone® helps: WhisperPhone® helps by simultaneously strengthening the signal, in conjunction with the Tactile Proprioceptive Kinesthetic (TPK) Loop, it strengthens the neural signal to build a stronger neural pathway. In other words, it becomes easier for the user to repeat the desired pronunciation in the same way in the future.

Auditory Discrimination

Activity: Repeating a verbal description (e.g. “The chicks are on the table” versus “The chips are on the table”) and then identifying the corresponding picture

Autism

Why WhisperPhone helps: WhisperPhone helps by simultaneously strengthening the signal, in conjunction with the Tactile Proprioceptive Kinesthetic (TPK) Loop; it strengthens the neural signal to build a stronger neural pathway. In other words, it becomes easier for the user to repeat the desired pronunciation in the same way in the future.

Non-Verbal or Limited Verbal Child

Why WhisperPhone® helps: WhisperPhone® helps because it amplifies a child’s own sound production and increases auditory feedback of the sounds, it reinforces sound production.

Selective Mutism

Activity: Making sound effects while listening to a story that is read aloud or when playing

Expected Outcomes: Making more sounds in the presence of others

Why WhisperPhone® helps: Because it amplifies a child’s own sound production and increases auditory feedback of the sounds, it reinforces sound production. The child may focus more on the enjoyment of his own sounds without focusing on the presence of another person.

Prosodic Defects

Expected Outcomes: User can match prosodic patterns of language they’re learning. Users will have increased awareness of their own speech prosody and will be better able to produce varied intonation patterns to match a target pattern and to incorporate the patterns when reading.

Why WhisperPhone® helps: WhisperPhone® helps by enhancing the auditory feedback loop by making users’ speech more distinct to themselves and thus improves self monitoring and allows for better self correction.

Learning a New Language

Foreign language teachers and teachers with ELL students—WhisperPhone® provides assistance when learning the intricacies of a new language. It helps to develop or lighten accents for better pronunciation.

Situation: Accent modification and learning a new language. WhisperPhone® is great for ELL students and foreign language classrooms

Expected Outcomes: Learner more likely to match phonemes and prosodic patterns of language being learned.

Why WhisperPhone® helps: Each language has its own unique set of phonemes and prosody. Through an improved signal-to-noise ratio, the learner can hear phonemes more clearly and self-monitor/self-correct more effectively. Since WhisperPhone® only requires a soft voice, users are often more likely to take risks in trying new pronunciations around their peers in a learning environment.

Music, Debate, Theater, Speech

Theater requires each actor to become a new character, which often means adjusting an accent or using one’s voice to portray an emotion. WhisperPhone® helps actors to practice modulating their voices while also providing an excellent way to memorize their lines.

Debate and speech practice with WhisperPhone® helps the speakers to keep away from a monotone voice and learn ways to make their standpoint better understood through voice fluctuation. It also helps with memorization.